crackers

Homemade Bacon Dog Treats

August 13, 2018

While I don’t have a pup of my own (something I remind my husband of, daily), there is a special place in my heart for all dogs. If I see a person walking down the street with their doggo, I will instinctually talk…yes talk…to the dog while totally ignoring the human.

It typically goes something like this:

“Hey puppy! How are you today? Oh, you’re so sweet! Yes, you are!” in the most annoying baby/pet voice imaginable.

I am sure the owners think that I am a total weirdo, but I don’t care. I just want the dog to like me!

And that’s why I have gone about testing my own dog treat recipe! We have a few dogs in our community, and while they are all very friendly, I will do anything I can to win them over. Even if it means carrying around homemade bacon dog treats with me whenever I go outside.

I have no shame.

This recipe for bacon dog treats seems to be a hit amongst my test group. I mean, they have bacon in them. How can they be bad?

How to Make Them

Because some dogs have a wheat sensitivity, the recipe mainly consists of whole ground oats which can be kinder on a puppers tummy.

Process the whole oats in a food processor until slightly coarse.

Then add in the whole wheat flour, baking powder, and very crispy bacon. The reason for adding crispy bacon at this stage is so that it creates a bacon “flour” that is incorporated throughout the treat. Pulse until there are no large chunks of bacon left.

Add in the eggs and process until you have a crumbly dough.

Lastly, add in the rest of the less crispy bacon strips and just process until there are chunks of bacon throughout the dough.

Dump the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap and wrap into a disc. Refrigerate for about an hour so that all the moisture has a chance to be absorbed into the dough.

When you are ready to bake, roll out the dough and cut into shape. Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes on one side, then flip over and bake for another 5-10 minutes on the other. You want these treats to be completely dried out.

Once they are out of the oven and cooled, you can choose to give them to your dog right away, store them in an airtight container, OR to add even more yumminess!

I know my old dog loved herself some peanut butter. You could give her anything if it had peanut butter on it and she would eat it. So in honor of her, I added a little peanut butter drizzle on top.

Tell me what dog could resist bacon covered peanut butter?

And I know what you are wondering. Did I try them?

Of course I did! I have to try everything I make. The verdict? Well, you probably won’t be reaching for these any time soon. They are a wee bit bland and definitely bacon-y, but really not that bad. Kind of like a bland bacon cracker.

But the pooches sure seemed to like them!

Supplies and Recipe

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Homemade Graham Crackers

August 15, 2017

Nothing like posting over 24 hours late (again). Game of Thrones has my Sunday priorities all messed up, guys. I may have spent all day making the ingredients for homemade s’mores so that I could post the recipes this week. But come 9:00 pm on Sunday night and my attention 100% belongs to HBO. But better, late than never, right?

Now I love graham crackers, but homemade graham crackers make the store bought version taste like cardboard. These homemade versions are so much richer and more flavorful and not quite as overly sweet like processed cookies tend to be.

Plus, you can make them in your food processor, which I love!

The hardest part of this whole recipe was finding graham flour. And by that I mean I didn’t find any graham flour. So instead I made my own by processing some wheat germ. Which also wasn’t easy to find. Quick tip, look for it near the oatmeal in your grocery store.

Mix together your freshly processed graham flour with whole wheat flour, all purpose flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and baking powder. Then cut in chilled butter until it forms a coarse corn meal like consistency.

Then mix in milk, molasses, and honey until it forms a ball of dough.

After chilling in the fridge for about an hour, the dough is ready to be rolled out. Graham crackers should be pretty thin, so I used the thinnest rolling pin bands to roll out my dough about 1/8th of an inch thick. I also uses a ravioli cutter to cut out my crackers into small scalloped squares. You could also use a pizza cutter to cut the dough into squares, or any shaped cutter to cut them into whatever shape you like.

On top of each cracker, poke a few holes so that they don’t puff up too much. Then sprinkle them with a bit of sugar.

Finally, bake them off in the oven until they are nice and crispy. Ideally, you won’t over bake them like I did. A few of them got a little charred. Fortunately for me, I like things that are on the burnt side.

Other than the ones that got a little extra toasty, these were some of the best graham crackers I have ever had. Like I said, there is just something about homemade graham cracker that is just so much better than the store bought kind (probably the freshness, lack of preservatives, ingredients you can pronounce). You can actually taste the subtle hints of molasses and honey.

Also, I love that they are a bit sturdier than the average graham cracker, making them ideal for some s’mores! Don’t you hate it when you are trying to assemble your s’more and your graham cracker breaks? Me too! I will be sharing more oh how I turned these grahams into s’mores this week! Stay tuned!

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Creamy Bacon Onion Dip

January 30, 2017

A lot of times I like to find healthy alternatives for my recipes. Such as swapping butter or sour cream for Greek yogurt. Or sugar for apple sauce. Well…this is not one of those recipes, my friends. There is literally nothing healthy about this Bacon Onion dip. Except maybe the onions…

But man is this bacon onion dip worth all those calories!

I saw this recipe for Bacon Onion dip on Food Network a while ago and I was pretty much drooling by the end or the episode. How could anything with bacon and caramelized onions be bad? I’m pretty sure it’s scientifically impossible.

I tried out the recipe for our game night last weekend. It turned out to be such a huge hit (mainly with my husband), that I made it again the next day for our Small Group. It actually gave me an opportunity to make a couple tweaks, and, in my humble opinion, make it even better!

This dip starts with a base of cream cheese and mayonnaise (told you it was unhealthy!). To that I added some smoked paprika, a smidge of Dijon mustard, and a pinch of cayenne. Then I mixed the whole thing up with my hand mixer until it was nice and fluffy.

But before I did all that, I caramelized some diced onions. Dicing the onions not only makes this process a bit quicker, but it’s much easier to eat in the dip than having strands of onion. Then I added the onions to the cream cheese mixture.

But that is not all I added. I also added some mozzarella and Paremsan cheese as well as some chopped up bacon that I just microwaved until crispy. After the whole gang was in the bowl, I gave the dip a good stir. I wanted to make sure every bite had a bit of onion, bacon, and cheese.

But to make sure that everyone got a bit of bacon, I added some more cheese and bacon on top.

Once this dip came out of the oven, we couldn’t keep our hands off of it. Or really, our crackers out of it. I would love to describe it to you, but literally the only thing I can think of is “creamy, bacony and oniony”, which is probably everything you assumed it would be from the title. Just trust me…it’s really, really good.

And you know what this dip would be perfect for? The Super Bowl! I am pretty sure that every Super Bowl party requires some sort of awesome dip. So you should make this one and thank me later.

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